Books: Francoise Goes to Hollywood

The heroine cannot decide what novçelist's nightmare she has stumbled
upon. Confronting a homicidal maniac, she says: "I was drifting between
James M. Cain and Kathleen Norris." Unfortunately, that is also the
drift of Sagan's seventh novel, which is a little more weird than her
usual blend of native wit and updated Colette. The characters and
setting are American, but Dorothy Seymour, Hollywood scriptwriter, may
as well be one of Sagan's Parisian cocottes: she wears St. Laurent
copies, vacations on the Riviera, suffers liver attacks...